A plea for help it might be, but a sales technique for new homes it most definitely is not.
That is how developers and Carpentersville village officials view the latest effort by Community Unit School District 300 to address crowding.
That effort will involve a letter asking developers to inform prospective homeowners that district schools are seriously overcrowded.
The letter probably will be sent soon to at least 20 developers who build homes in district communities, District 300 Supt. Norm Wetzel said.
“If I were a developer and I received that letter, I don’t think that’s what I would include in my promotional literature,” said Carpentersville Trustee Ed Regalado.
Wetzel, however, said the board feels a responsibility to make sure residents know the potential results of overcrowding. One district committee is looking into redistricting; another is examining the feasibility of year-round schooling, he noted.
“Youngsters within the same families could be on totally different schedules,” Wetzel said.
Carpentersville, with about 26,000 people, is the largest community covered by District 300 and has been the site of extensive residential development in the last five years.
The district covers 118 square miles and serves about 15,200 students in communities in Kane, Cook, McHenry and DeKalb Counties.
In referendums in November 1997 and in March, residents voted down a $70 million plan that would have built two schools, enlarged nine schools and made renovations, such as adding new windows, to several others.
“They asked for everything and got turned down and now it’s panic time,” said Carpentersville Trustee Regalado.
District 300 must have known that a residential development boom would occur in Carpentersville when the village annexed 1,100 acres in 1992, said Ginny Parsons, sales manager for Vermont Homes in Carpentersville. Four years ago, the company began building Spring Acres Hills, a residential development, west of Illinois Highway 31 in the village.
A Carpentersville native whose daughter attends a District 300 school, Parsons said she has followed the crowding issue closely and is informing potential homeowners about the problem.
But other developers could find the district’s request puzzling because the expected result of the annexation was no secret, Parsons said.
“A letter like that, distributed to a potential developer in town, from the village’s standpoint, obviously is going to have a negative effect,” said Daniel O’Malley, assistant village manager for Carpentersville. “I think one thing this issue raises is that the school district and the village need to be a little more in sync in what’s going on.”
It is not the first time recently that District 300 has sent a “mixed message,” Regalado said. A few months ago, Wetzel sent a letter to at least five communities including Carpentersville in which he was “looking for some help in going to state legislators and asking for funding,” Regalado said.
“I’m not sure that’s our role,” Regalado said.
